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The main opposition Republican People’s Party’s (CHP) becoming entangled in the judiciary is a result of internal power struggles. The current leadership may object to judicial proceedings. CHP officials may try to portray these legal processes as a government–opposition rivalry by over-politicizing them. They may complain about the government by writing letters to the West or giving interviews to Western media. CHP Chairperson Özgür Özel’s leadership and his supporters are already doing this. However, this approach does not resolve the CHP’s multilayered and ongoing crises. On the contrary, it only deepens them.
CHP members must first confront the root cause of this multilayered crisis. In fact, both the current leadership, its opponents within the party, as well as journalists and political analysts who support the CHP, are fully aware of all the allegations that have become judicial matters. Looking at past statements, it is clear that journalists who support the CHP, in particular, already have considerable knowledge of these issues. Indeed, journalists close to the Özel–Ekrem İmamoğlu bloc have even revealed in the past what was being discussed internally in the party.
The root cause of this deepening crisis in the CHP is clear. During former Chairperson Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu’s era, more pragmatic politicians who did not come from the CHP tradition became attached to the party. They then made moves aimed at seizing control of the party leadership. Put more concretely, this crisis is a confrontation, a struggle, between those who long engaged in politics within the CHP during its years out of power and those who joined the CHP later. CHP members do not deny the responsibility of the Kılıçdaroğlu leadership in the emergence of this crisis.
In past years, politicians from other parties attached themselves to the CHP, the most important party of the opposition, and became candidates in local elections. There were two key reasons why such figures, who did not come from the CHP tradition, could so easily integrate into the party. The first was that the CHP leadership was convinced of a self-fulfilling prophecy that it could not win elections with traditional politics and traditional politicians. Kılıçdaroğlu thought that opening to the right would lighten this historical burden and pressure. Politicians from the right saw this as an opportunity. The second was that these politicians, who acted more out of pragmatism than from any strong political identity or ideological stance, knew that the CHP base, defined by its opposition to those in power, would easily embrace them. That is what happened. They became CHP candidates. Riding the wave of anti-government sentiment and energy, they won local elections.
However, these groups were not content with the power and urban rents they controlled in local administrations. They wanted to seize the CHP itself, sidelining Kılıçdaroğlu, the very figure who had integrated them into the party. They launched this process from Istanbul. With the urban rents of the big cities, the employment opportunities, and media support, those who had joined the party later seized a “resource advantage” in intra-party competition. They used this advantage to topple Kılıçdaroğlu and his team. Unable to compete with the new leadership that had secured this resource advantage, the supporters of the old leadership took the matter to court. It appears they had already gathered the evidence to be submitted in a judicial process stemming from the intra-party power struggle.
To debate the CHP’s crisis through judicial processes is nothing more than an attempt to obscure what is really happening. Judicial processes are the result, not the cause. It is CHP members themselves who have taken the matter to court. The confrontation between the “reformists” and the supporters of the old leadership will only deepen the crisis in the CHP. Because neither the old nor the new leaders want to resolve this crisis through the mediation of “wise CHP elders.” Yet no matter what the courts decide, the CHP could resolve its own problems internally. However, since doing so would mean someone losing in the intra-party struggle, it serves their interests more to shift responsibility onto the government and the judiciary.
